Elections

A wave of star power has lifted hopes that viewership will pick up for the women’s league. After the Indiana Fever made Caitlin Clark the W.N.B.A.’s No. 1 draft pick this week, the team’s ticket prices soared. The basketball star’s long-distance shots and huge following have landed her on “Saturday Night Live,” attracted interest from sponsors like Nike and sold out jerseys at a rapid pace.In exchange for Clark’s once-in-a-generation talent, the W.N.B.A. will pay her … $76,535.News of the paltry first-year salary has ignited a countrywide debate that even President Biden weighed in on, commenting that “even if you’re the best, women are not paid their fair share.”It also highlighted a hard truth that largely goes unspoken about the W.N.B.A. and many women’s sports leagues: They aren’t profitable.The simplest reason the W.N.B.A. isn’t paying Clark more is that the league brings in just $200 million annually and relies on the N.B.A. for some of its funding. The N.B.A., by contrast, brings in about $10 billion.When the N.B.A. and its commissioner at the time, David Stern, founded the W.N.B.A. in 1996, return on their investment wasn’t their immediate focus. As Stern later recounted, he wanted “to develop new fans, more programming, have arena content outside the N.B.A. season, give more girls an incentive to play basketball.”And, he added, “we knew it was going to be a long haul.”Indeed, many argue that the W.N.B.A. simply needs more time: The N.B.A. had a 50-year head start, and stars like Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan helped lift it up in the 1980s and ’90s.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

On This Week’s Episode:A girl signs up for a class. A couple hires an accountant. Several co-workers decide to pool their money and buy a bunch of lottery tickets. In the beginning, they’re full of hope and optimism … then something turns.Stories of good ideas gone bad.This is a rerun of an episode that first aired in January 2006.Ping ZhuThe New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling and provides news, depth and serendipity. It is available to Times news subscribers on iOS. If you haven’t already, download the app and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Our new audio app is home to “This American Life,” the award-winning program hosted by Ira Glass. New episodes debut in our app a day earlier than in the regular podcast feed, and we also have an archive of the show. The app includes a “Best of ‘This American Life’” section with some of our favorite bite-size clips, so you can enjoy the show even if you don’t have a lot of time. More

A stroll around the city with a great stylist; a comic novel of love and real estate.Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York TimesDear readers,I don’t make any special claims for New York except that it’s the city I know best. Well, that and the fact that people really do talk a lot about real estate, a subject that somehow manages to be tedious and thrilling, crass and impersonal all at once.The other day, I cried on the subway. This in itself wasn’t a big deal; if you live here long enough, the law of averages dictates that at some point you’re going to sob on an uptown 2 train while people studiously avoid your eyes or, occasionally, glare at you with faint irritation. It has always felt to me like a safe place to cry — a sort of international waters.Of course, on this occasion, I ran into someone I’d known slightly since kindergarten. We ignored the fact that I was weeping and talked vaguely about real estate and our plans to skip an upcoming reunion. I got off two stops early for both our sakes, bought a large pineapple juice and thought about E.B. White.—Sadie“Here Is New York,” by E.B. WhiteNonfiction, 1949We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga is set to become the first unionized auto factory in the South not owned by one of Detroit’s Big Three.In a landmark victory for organized labor, workers at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee have voted overwhelmingly to join the United Automobile Workers union, becoming the first nonunion auto plant in a Southern state to do so.The company said in a statement late Friday that the union had won 2,628 votes, with 985 opposed, in a three-day election. Two earlier bids by the U.A.W. to organize the Chattanooga factory over the last 10 years were narrowly defeated.The outcome is a breakthrough for the labor movement in a region where anti-union sentiment has been strong for decades. And it comes six months after the U.A.W. won record wage gains and improved benefits in negotiations with the Detroit automakers.The U.A.W. has for more than 80 years represented workers employed by General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis, the producer of Chrysler, Jeep, Ram and Dodge vehicles, and has organized some heavy-truck and bus factories in the South.But the union had failed in previous attempts to organize any of the two dozen automobile factories owned by other companies across an area stretching from South Carolina to Texas and as far north as Ohio and Indiana.With the victory in Chattanooga, the U.A.W. will turn its focus to other Southern plants. A vote will take place in mid-May at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Ala., near Tuscaloosa. The U.A.W. is hoping to organize a half-dozen or more plants over the next two years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Friends of Max Azzarello, who set himself on fire outside Donald J. Trump’s trial, said he was a caring person whose paranoia had led him down a dark path.The journey that ended with a man setting himself on fire on Friday outside the Manhattan courthouse where Donald J. Trump was being tried seemed to have begun in Florida, with a series of increasingly bizarre outbursts.Standing in the afternoon chill, the man, Max Azzarello, 37, of St. Augustine, Fla., threw pamphlets into the air before dousing himself with an accelerant and setting his body ablaze. The police hurried to extinguish the flames, but officials said his injuries were grave, and he was being treated at a hospital burn unit.The fire just a block or two from the courthouse appeared calculated to draw widespread attention, horrifying bystanders and temporarily overshadowing the momentous trial of a former president.But a closer look at the path the man had traveled to this moment of self-destruction revealed a recent spiral into volatility, one marked by a worldview that had become increasingly confusing and disjointed — and appeared to be unattached to any political party. His social media postings and arrest records suggest the immolation stemmed instead from a place of conspiracy theories and paranoia.Until last summer, Mr. Azzarello seemed to have lived a relatively quiet life. After high school, where he was a member of a bowling team, he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009, with degrees in anthropology and public policy.As a student at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., where he received a master’s degree in city and regional planning in 2012, he was known for leaving supportive Post-it notes for classmates in the hallways and for his karaoke performances of Frank Sinatra and Disney tunes, said a former classmate, Katie Brennan.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The drone attack may have been launched from inside Iran, once again demonstrating Israel’s ability to carry out clandestine operations there.The Israeli military struck Iran early on Friday in retaliation for an aerial attack on Israel last weekend, according to two Israeli and three Iranian officials, but the strike appeared to be limited in scope and the reaction from both Israel and Iran was muted.Iranian officials said that the strike had hit a military air base near the city of Isfahan, in central Iran, and that it had been carried out by small drones. They said the drones might have been launched from inside Iran, whose radar systems had not detected unidentified aircraft entering Iranian airspace.If the drones were launched within the country, it would demonstrate once again Israel’s ability to mount clandestine operations in Iranian territory. Iranian officials said that a separate group of small drones was shot down in the region of Tabriz, roughly 500 miles north of Isfahan.Israeli warplanes also fired missiles during the retaliatory strike, a Western official and two Iranian officials said. It was not immediately clear whether Iran’s defenses intercepted the missiles or where they landed.The Israeli military declined to comment. A senior U.S. official said that Israel had notified the United States through multiple channels shortly before the attack. All the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.Addressing reporters at a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of 7 nations in Italy, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the United States had “not been involved in any offensive operations” in Iran. But he declined to comment further and would not even confirm the Israeli strike, referring instead to “reported events.” More

Larissa Anderson and On Friday, Taylor Swift released her 11th studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department.” Two hours after the initial release at midnight, she announced a second volume of the album, bringing the number of new songs to 31.Our pop music critic Lindsay Zoladz assessed them all and found that despite several strong songs, Swift’s abundance yields diminishing returns.On today’s episodeLindsay Zoladz, a pop music critic for The Times.Photo Illustration by The New York Times; Photo: Michael Tran/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAdditional readingLindsay’s review of “The Tortured Poets Department”The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. More

Jon M. Chu, the director of “Crazy Rich Asians,” and Billie Jean King were set to be among the featured guests.The University of Southern California, reeling after a controversy over its valedictorian selection, announced Friday that its main commencement program would eliminate outside speakers and honorees, including the director of “Crazy Rich Asians,” Jon M. Chu, and the tennis star Billie Jean King.The private university in Los Angeles broke with tradition this week by announcing that its valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, a first-generation Muslim student, would not deliver a commencement address on May 10, a decision that came after campus Jewish organizations objected to her selection.The student groups, including Trojans for Israel, cited a pro-Palestinian social media link by Ms. Tabassum, who is of South Asian ancestry. After the groups announced their opposition, the university said it received a barrage of communications indicating that the commencement would be disrupted.While the university cited security concerns for canceling the speech, Ms. Tabassum, a biomedical engineering major, said in a statement that she was “shocked” and “profoundly disappointed” by the decision. And she questioned the school’s motivation.“There remain serious doubts about whether U.S.C.’s decision to revoke my invitation to speak is made solely on the basis of safety,” she said.After the decision to cancel her speech, the administration has faced several of days of protests calling for Ms. Tabassum’s reinstatement as a speaker. The U.S.C. announcement on Friday followed inquiries by The New York Times as to whether Mr. Chu, an alumnus, might withdraw as the graduation speaker because of the controversy. By the end of the day, the university had removed his name and photo from its commencement website. And it announced that he and other speakers were “being released.”“Given the highly publicized circumstances surrounding our main stage commencement program, university leadership has decided it is best to release our outside speakers and honorees from attending this year’s ceremony.”Mr. Chu and Ms. King could not be reached for comment.Earlier this week, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California said it was looking into the possibility of representing Ms. Tabassum in a lawsuit against the university, citing a California statute known as the Leonard Law, which applies First Amendment free speech protections to private and public colleges in the state.An A.C.L.U. lawyer in Los Angeles, Mohammad Tajsar, said that U.S.C. has a formidable private security apparatus that should be able to handle such an event, even with security concerns.“If the university can accommodate speeches by Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopoulos and host President Obama and the King of Jordan at its graduations, surely it can bear whatever burden comes with celebrating Asna Tabassum as its valedictorian,” Mr. Tajsar said. More